I’ve been looking at the various ways to use blogs and wikis together, and found a new one (at least to me).

Suppose you want to record what you learn at a class or a conference. Both wikis and blogs let you compile links and share information, but blogs are better suited to broadcast that information. On the other hand, wikis allow content to evolve and grow by enabling collaboration. Blogs allow feedback in the form of comments, but searching through comments is not that convenient.

So here’s an alternative that lets you use both!

Using the WordPress plug-in “WIKI INC” you can include wiki content in your blog post or page. I created a wiki page to further explain, and have dynamically “included” it below to demonstrate this plug-in’s functionality.

Everything below here comes dynamically from a Commons Wiki page

Our current version of MediaWiki has seen its days, and we’re badly in need of an upgrade. When that happens (hopefully in a couple weeks), the Commons wiki will be able to run some interesting extensions. (Extensions are like plug-ins in WordPress – they are chunks of code that extend the wiki’s functionality.)

First on the list is to add an RSS feed generator to the Commons wiki. This will be done by enabling a News Channel extension, which creates feeds from wiki pages according to category combinations. There will be more on this when it becomes available.

To complement the RSS feed generator, we will install a RSS Feed Reader that will let you embed RSS Feed into your wiki pages. These feeds can come from the Commons wiki, or from other sources.

Our “Welcome” page will soon change to take advantage of this RSS functionality. We will be able to showcase new pages, and make our front page more dynamic and interesting.

Let me know about any other extensions you are interested in getting installed. One in particular which caught my eye is an extension that lets a user to pick pages from the wiki and “Create a book.” The book can be downloaded to a PDF, and sent via email to students. Could be a great way to centralize course content and save on the cost of textbooks. (Of course there are copyright issues here…)

And finally, in anticipation of the new MediaWiki upgrade, the Wiki Wrangler blog has changed its look. Goodbye dusty mountains. The columns on the left and right will eventually be filled with content from the wiki. (For now, I have hard-code some links to new wiki pages, and taken a feed from the Commons News blog.)

I started a new category on the Commons Wiki called “Open Source” and added five pages from the research I’ve been doing. Open Source Movement gives a quick background of the OS movement, lists some of its tenets, and provides some useful links. Open Source – Demographics investigates the makeup and motivational factors involved in Open Source communities. Evaluating Open Source Solutions tracks journal articles that explore conversion decisions — whether Open Source the correct approach, and how to estimate cost savings and support needs. Open Source – Defect Tracking and Resolution pulls together studies that investigate the Open Source development model – showing how a dedicated community can use group forums and wikis to track bugs, plan enhancements, and release superior software in a shorter time frame than the traditional, proprietary model. Open Source – Digital Libraries reviews articles about Open Source Content Management systems, focusing on the LIS community.

Please feel free to add more content to any of these pages, or add some new pages to this category.

I created a new wiki page called Open Access Publishing and tagged it under a new category called “Open Access (OA).” As the cost of journals continues to skyrocket, OA needs to be on our minds. Anyone with interest in this topic, please feel free to add some pages.

Whether you’re busy loading apps on your new iPad this week, or not, you might want to check out our Commons Wiki category Teaching and Learning with Technology. This is a general category and one of our largest, with almost thirty tagged articles. I will feature just a few.

• The Creative Commons Copyright Resources wiki is a great resource for copyright questions. It includes links to overviews, tutorials, wikis, and blogs related to content ownership issues. Links to sites with images, video, and textual content licensed by Creative Commons are provided. Very useful for Web publishing!
• Sites with Information about Teaching with Web 2.0 is a good series of annotated links to interesting Web sites that deal with Teaching and Web 2.0. There is a link to the CUNY WriteSite which serves CUNY writers of all types, from undergrads to professors.
• Design a Lean and Clean Online Interface to Promote Learning is a comprehensive investigation on Blackboard and how it can be used effectively. (The Commons Wiki has a Blackboard category that is also worth browsing through. This category deserves its own featured blog, and I will work on that soon!)
• Web-based Assignment Design:Principles and Possibilities provides another series of annotated links to articles about teaching web-based courses, and examples how other universities are implementing on-line courses. Check out the link to e-Pedagogy for on-line syllabi and course websites in Literature, Theory, Writing/Composition/Rhetoric and Cyber-Cultural studies. Good stuff!

Happy browsing. And as always, please feel free to contribute more content to this category.

One of the great ways to use the Commons wiki is to share your external links.  Maybe you’re working on a group project and need to organize your on-line resources.   Or you’ve done some individual research, and have a wiki page full of links others might find useful.   Tag your page so others know about it.  They can add their links too, and their annotations, and the wiki can grow organically.

New to wikis?  Follow this link to see how to create hyperlinks.

Check out how our wiki authors are using lists of hyperlinks as the backbone of their pages:

• Cool Tools for Teachers – As its title suggests, the page is loaded with links to citation managers, free quiz generators, blogs, wikis, and other useful links for pedagogy.

• Blogs about Education and Technology – This one lists some of the blogs that the authors have found with a brief description of each, including the blog’s primary focus.

• Sites with Information about Teaching with Web 2.0 – Here’s another example of a site that has grown when authors aggregate and annotate links they use often.  This one deals with Web 2.0 tools and is part of a larger site called Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0. which is also worth checking out.

Have some links you can add to any of these sites?  Pages only get better when more authors get involved and share what they’ve learned!